Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
197–201
In this paper we describe the development of a tool that allows shipyard planners to
efficiently and effectively plan space within valuable areas of a shipyard. Traditionally,
space is considered a resource; however, it is difficult to accurately account for and
plan its consumption with the current planning software tools available. The spatial
scheduling tool described in this paper can be used by planners and construction
management teams to manually or semiautomatically reserve space within the ship-
yard for construction of large units over the entire ship erection period. The result is
the ability to efficiently generate and compare multiple space allocation plans with the
ultimate goal of maintaining the critical ship erection schedule. This work has been
developed with Northrop Grumman Newport News (NGNN) under a project funded by
an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) program.
1. Introduction blies, and hundreds of thousands of parts. While the aircraft car-
rier’s size dictates more units than the DDG, significantly higher
SHIPBUILDING HAS significantly evolved throughout the past lifting capabilities allow the carrier to be constructed using much
quarter century. The traditional “stick-building” approach to ship- larger units than the base units used to construct the DDG.
building has been replaced with a modular construction strategy as As the units become larger and heavier, production space in the
dry-dock and lifting capabilities at shipyards have improved. This shipyard becomes a constraint. The larger units are limited in
change enabled shipbuilders to effectively outfit larger sections of where they can be produced due to the lifting and handling limits.
the ship earlier in the construction process rather than relying on For this reason, it is important to accurately plan the space in these
less efficient practices that characterized dry-dock construction. areas to ensure that units are moved only when and where neces-
Using a modular construction strategy, relatively small piece parts sary to efficiently use the available space. Unnecessary moves
are joined to form subassemblies, subassemblies are joined to result in nonvalue-added cost to the unit. The maximum number of
form assemblies, units or blocks, and units are joined together to units should be constructed in the high-value areas of the shipyard.
form larger blocks of the ship. Typically, the ship is then erected However, due to production constraints and aggressive construc-
block-by-block until the ship is complete. The various units (sub- tion schedules, maximizing the number of units in an area may
assemblies, assemblies, units, and blocks) are almost always result in unnecessary moves, while minimizing unnecessary
unique in size, shape, and weight and largely depend on the size moves results in a less efficient use of the space.
of the final ship, the lifting and handling capabilities of the spe-
Spatial scheduling is currently being done by small groups of
cific shipyard, and the extent of outfitting that is completed in that
experienced people using tools such as computer-aided design
area of the ship.
(CAD), PowerPoint, or Excel and schedule information from their
For instance, construction of a CVN aircraft carrier hull struc-
planning systems. Although these ad hoc tools are relatively ef-
ture is made up of approximately 170 super-sized units, more than
fective, they are cumbersome and require a significant amount of
300 smaller erectables, and 1,500 base units, in addition to the
time to update even for minor schedule changes. In addition, spa-
assembly of thousands of details and millions of parts. On the
tial scheduling practices and any lessons learned over time are
other hand, the construction of a DDG, which is obviously smaller
contained within the experts themselves. Over time, this knowl-
than CVN, requires roughly 200 base units, hundreds of assem-
edge is lost and must be reacquired by yet another generation of
new employees. Providing some type of modeling or algorithmic
support to capture this knowledge and automate the process with
Manuscript received by JSP Committee from SPS 2006. a “smarter tool” would provide a more efficient allocation of the
2. Problem
where: For small problems (∼20 units) solution times are between 9 and
300 seconds. For much larger problems (>100 units), the time
P is the total number of time periods in the schedule. required to find a single solution increases to between 4 minutes
SFi is the required raw square feet for period i, and several hours. In comparison, preliminary tests on the math-
SF range is the maximum required raw square feet minus the ematical programming procedures showed that many smaller
minimum for the entire planning horizon. problems (∼3 to 4 units) were unsolvable using current optimiza-
Ni is the number of units scheduled in period i. tion software.
NR is the maximum number of scheduled units minus the mini- In some cases, there may not be a feasible solution to the layout
mum for the entire planning horizon. problem. When there is no feasible solution, the procedure halts
after a predetermined time and reports to the user that there are too
Each of the time periods in the planning horizon is given a value many units that need to be allocated to the space. This procedure
according to equation (1) and inserted into a list in nondecreasing has been developed from a class of solution procedures called
order of CP. The procedure then moves down the list and places heuristics. Unlike mathematical programming, heuristics are not
each of the units. guaranteed to find an optimal solution or any feasible solution for